Investigative interviews with online sexual offenders: A discursive analysis of verbal cues of deception

The objective of this study is to investigate how individuals convicted of online sexual crimes use language to deceive police investigators during investigative interviews. Discursive and interactional cues that may indicate deception were identified based on the suspects’ responses to questions asked by the police investigator, that is, whether the questions had a high or low potential to elicit deceit. To refine the selection of deceptive answers to be analyzed, the information that was contradicted or questioned during the interview was then targeted for each suspect. The results show that seven elements – grammatical negations, argumentative markers, uncertainty markers, use of the conditional, ignorance markers, sincerity markers, and volubility – distinguish between truthful and deceptive responses. Findings suggest that these elements are used as strategies to convince the investigator of the truthfulness of the (deceptive) statements being made and to avoid providing information that could be refuted during the interview.